Southern Baptists have a treasured doctrine known as “once saved, always saved.” It means that God is able to keep and protect any person who turns to Jesus in repentance and faith, for this life and also the life to come.
But can our good and gracious God do the same for an entire denomination?
Neither the Bible nor Christian doctrine give us any clarity on this question, but the history of the Southern Baptist Convention leaves us with this puzzling predicament: can God save the Southern Baptist Convention?
In addition to the customary failures of people and their projects, Southern Baptists were born addicted to slavery. When Baptists nation-wide wanted their missionaries to eschew slavery, those in the South rebelled and formed their own union, then and now called the Southern Baptist Convention. That was 1845.
This helps explain their rebellion during the Civil War, their resistance to Reconstruction in the decades that followed, and their resolve to fight racial integration during the Civil Rights Movement.
I grew up during the latter but have no recollection of my religious leaders advocating for the civil rights of anybody, let alone our black neighbors. We kept trying to get people saved so that they could rest easy when they thought about dying. Along the way, I learned to love Jesus, sing many wonderful songs, and memorize much of the Bible.
But the powers that be among Southern Baptist brethren did something that has, in the words of Jesus, cost them their soul. They attempted to trade their long despicable practice of racial superiority for what they hoped was cultural significance, moral achievement, and denominational redemption.
Southern Baptists joined up with the Moral Majority of Jerry Falwell, the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, and Focus on the Family of James Dobson (to name of a few of their more prominent co-conspirators). They entered the Culture Wars on the side of the Righteous Right, sure as hell that in so doing they were engaged in the work of God, saving the United States from all its accumulated evils, especially abortion, homosexuality, and unhindered federal power.
The overriding ambition of this auspicious army of righteous warriors was taking control of the Supreme Court and overturning the 1973 decision that legalized abortion. That decision was derived from the implied constitutional right to privacy, and they were willing, over these last 50 years, to surrender the one to be shed of the other.
Now here they are, a half century later and purged of all their ungodly liberals (like me), poised to gain that for which they have worked and prayed for so long: a Court (ironically full of Roman Catholic judges) on the brink of overturning privacy, abortion, and Roe v Wade.
But along the way and to this very day, those Southern Baptists have had to face the facts of their uncertain status before the God of the Bible. They are still arrayed against any substantive engagement with the racism that pervades our country; they are now the poster boys for all the mean and ungodly things powerful men do to marginalized women; and they are in the news every month of every year for the steep decline in those who affiliate with their brand of religion, who claim the name Southern Baptist.
This week, a 385-page report commissioned and financed by Southern Baptists (over the objection of its most powerful leaders) documented to themselves and to the watching world what a horrid mess they have made.
Reading the narratives of how these “once saved, always saved” men abused women and denied all of it when the women started to speak, reminds me of the gospel text (Luke 24) that describes how the women who were first at the empty tomb were received by the men: “But their story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn’t believe it.”
I wish this were all nonsense: this cultural resistance to racial reconciliation, this religious insistence of the subordination of women, this steep and steady decline in the Christian community I once called home.
But sadly, it is the truth, the gospel truth, and nothing but the truth. But what it does not tell us is the answer to my question: whether God can save the Southern Baptist Convention.
According to their own doctrine, such a work of grace requires repentance: that is, turning and going in a different direction.
One different direction they could take to signal the kind of salvation they desperately need is the election of a woman as president of their fellowship, their denomination. Not even Southern Baptists have a rule against that!
But I’m not sure even that, surely a mighty work of God, would secure the redemption of these “once saved, always saved” brethren.
At the end of the day, though, it is sad, so very sad. I feel the pastoral sting, the prophetic suggestion of what Pope Francis once said to an associate who was complaining about papal critics, “You need to pray more, no?”
Yes, I need to pray more: for myself, for my Baptist brothers and sisters, for all of us who in ways public and private fall short of the kingdom of God.
(May 2022)
Southern Baptists have a treasured doctrine known as “once saved, always saved.” It means that God is able to keep and protect any person who turns to Jesus in repentance and faith, for this life and also the life to come.
But can our good and gracious God do the same for an entire denomination?
Neither the Bible nor Christian doctrine give us any clarity on this question, but the history of the Southern Baptist Convention leaves us with this puzzling predicament: can God save the Southern Baptist Convention?
In addition to the customary failures of people and their projects, Southern Baptists were born addicted to slavery. When Baptists nation-wide wanted their missionaries to eschew slavery, those in the South rebelled and formed their own union, then and now called the Southern Baptist Convention. That was 1845.
This helps explain their rebellion during the Civil War, their resistance to Reconstruction in the decades that followed, and their resolve to fight racial integration during the Civil Rights Movement.
I grew up during the latter but have no recollection of my religious leaders advocating for the civil rights of anybody, let alone our black neighbors. We kept trying to get people saved so that they could rest easy when they thought about dying. Along the way, I learned to love Jesus, sing many wonderful songs, and memorize much of the Bible.
But the powers that be among Southern Baptist brethren did something that has, in the words of Jesus, cost them their soul. They attempted to trade their long despicable practice of racial superiority for what they hoped was cultural significance, moral achievement, and denominational redemption.
Southern Baptists joined up with the Moral Majority of Jerry Falwell, the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, and Focus on the Family of James Dobson (to name of a few of their more prominent co-conspirators). They entered the Culture Wars on the side of the Righteous Right, sure as hell that in so doing they were engaged in the work of God, saving the United States from all its accumulated evils, especially abortion, homosexuality, and unhindered federal power.
The overriding ambition of this auspicious army of righteous warriors was taking control of the Supreme Court and overturning the 1973 decision that legalized abortion. That decision was derived from the implied constitutional right to privacy, and they were willing, over these last 50 years, to surrender the one to be shed of the other.
Now here they are, a half century later and purged of all their ungodly liberals (like me), poised to gain that for which they have worked and prayed for so long: a Court (ironically full of Roman Catholic judges) on the brink of overturning privacy, abortion, and Roe v Wade.
But along the way and to this very day, those Southern Baptists have had to face the facts of their uncertain status before the God of the Bible. They are still arrayed against any substantive engagement with the racism that pervades our country; they are now the poster boys for all the mean and ungodly things powerful men do to marginalized women; and they are in the news every month of every year for the steep decline in those who affiliate with their brand of religion, who claim the name Southern Baptist.
This week, a 385-page report commissioned and financed by Southern Baptists (over the objection of its most powerful leaders) documented to themselves and to the watching world what a horrid mess they have made.
Reading the narratives of how these “once saved, always saved” men abused women and denied all of it when the women started to speak, reminds me of the gospel text (Luke 24) that describes how the women who were first at the empty tomb were received by the men: “But their story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn’t believe it.”
I wish this were all nonsense: this cultural resistance to racial reconciliation, this religious insistence of the subordination of women, this steep and steady decline in the Christian community I once called home.
But sadly, it is the truth, the gospel truth, and nothing but the truth. But what it does not tell us is the answer to my question: whether God can save the Southern Baptist Convention.
According to their own doctrine, such a work of grace requires repentance: that is, turning and going in a different direction.
One different direction they could take to signal the kind of salvation they desperately need is the election of a woman as president of their fellowship, their denomination. Not even Southern Baptists have a rule against that!
But I’m not sure even that, surely a mighty work of God, would secure the redemption of these “once saved, always saved” brethren.
At the end of the day, though, it is sad, so very sad. I feel the pastoral sting, the prophetic suggestion of what Pope Francis once said to an associate who was complaining about papal critics, “You need to pray more, no?”
Yes, I need to pray more: for myself, for my Baptist brothers and sisters, for all of us who in ways public and private fall short of the kingdom of God.
(May 2022)
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